ELIXIR is an intergovernmental organisation that brings together life science resources from across Europe. These resources include databases, software tools, training materials, cloud storage and supercomputers. The goal of ELIXIR is to coordinate these resources so that they form a single infrastructure. This infrastructure makes it easier for scientists to find and share data, exchange expertise, and agree on best practices. Ultimately, it will help them gain new insights into how living organisms work.

On July 25, 2017, ELIXIR announced the selected list of ELIXIR Core Data Resources. These are European data resources of fundamental importance to the wider life-science community and the long-term preservation of biological data.Identification of the ELIXIR Core Data Resources involved a careful evaluation of the multiple facets of the data resources. Indicators used in the evaluation are grouped into five categories:

■ Scientific focus and quality of science

■ Community served by the resource

■ Quality of service

■ Legal and funding infrastructure, and governance

■ Impact and translational stories

The details of the selection criteria are described in the F1000R ELIXIR track article 'Identifying ELIXIR Core Data Resources'. We are pleased that one of the selected data resources by ELIXIR is the Human Protein Atlas containing information for a large majority of all human protein-coding genes regarding the expression and localization of the corresponding proteins based on both RNA and protein data. This allows the Swedish-based Human Protein Atlas to integrate the data on protein expression with other core resources in Europe.

All core resource within ELIXIR are committed to Open Access as a core principle for publicly funded research. ELIXIR Core Data Resources should reflect this commitment and have terms of use or a licence that enables the reuse and remixing of data. The Human Protein Atlas has decided to adhere to this principle and this resource will from now on use the Creative Commons licenses CC BY-SA 4.0 conformant with the Open Definition.

A short video about ELIXIR can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PekFi7yqMr4

Mathias Uhlén